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(London, United Kingdom – July 1, 2015) — World Skateboarding Federation, a governing body for skateboarding, released today its ranking system for street skateboarding. The ranking system was one of the key elements of the Skate 20/20 Agenda designed to help skateboarding organize in preparation for a potential Olympic opportunity, set forth at the first ever Global Skateboarding Summit in Istanbul in May 2015. The ranking system was well received by the WSF board members and the summit attendees and was adopted following summit.

The ranking system is the first-ever street skateboarding ranking to include all the top contests. Individual skaters are ranked based on their contest performance in the top 10 skate events globally, including Skateboarding World Championships, X Games, Dew Tour, Street League, Copenhagen Pro, Tampa Pro, Simple Sessions, Mystic Cup, PS4 Series, Adrenalin Games, and DC Invitational Sao Paulo.

Top 10 Street Skateboarders for 2014 (Beginning August 31, rankings will be updated live for 2015)

Kelvin Hoefler – Brasil

Nyjah Huston – USA

Ryan Decenzo – USA

Ishod Wair – USA

Luan Oliveira, Brasil

Trevor Colden, USA

Chaz Ortiz, USA

Alec Majerus, Canada

Ryan Sheckler, USA

Shane O’Neill, USA

For the complete list of 2014 rankings, click here. The WSF website also features rankings from other skateboarding disciplines, including slalom, downhill and street. The street skateboarding ranking system was based on discussions at the Global Skateboarding Summit as well as meetings with key international skateboarding leaders. The ranking system uses multipliers for international broadcasting rights and the size of the contest purse.

“This comprehensive ranking system was based on months of research, and finally discussions and meetings among our board and other prominent leaders in the international skateboarding community,” said Tim McFerran, board president of World Skateboarding Federation. “The challenge was how to use the three prominent, invite-only contests – X Games, Dew Tour and Street League — in the ranking system since there are no qualifiers for those contests nor criteria for skaters to be selected. While most sports rankings would not include the invite-only contests, after much discussion, we determined that because of the high profile of these events, at this time, they should be used in the ranking calculations. We hope that some of these contests will convert to an open qualifier or utilize these rankings in their invites, so that skateboarders from around the world are given an equal opportunity to compete. This ranking system will allow skaters tremendous exposure, providing the best competition to challenge skaters and furthering the growth and exposure of the sport and its athletes by offering them a global platform.”

WSF has assembled a strong board made up of core international representatives and pro skateboarders from all disciplines and is working to unify skateboarding as part of its five year plan: the Skate 20/20 Agenda. Based on feedback from the global skateboarding community at the summit in May, WSF has been working to provide some of the needed infrastructure within the skateboarding community. The six key initiatives of the Skate 20/20 Agenda are:

Develop 40 National Governing Organizations over the next two years (WSF is already working with eight countries and will have those governing bodies set up by the end of the year)

Create a minimum of 17 WSF-sanctioned regional and national contests that feed into national championship events, by 2016

Create and support a global youth development program

Create a universal scoring system

Host International Judging Conference (Inaugural contest to be held in October 2015 in Kimberley, South Africa to coincide with Skateboarding World Championships)

WSF actively donates skateboards to youth in poverty stricken areas and supports worthwhile skateboarding organizations like Skateistan in South Africa. WSF is currently working with a number of countries, providing leadership and expertise, to help them form national federations. The mission of the World Skateboarding Federation is to promote skateboarding around the world; to grow and connect relevant skateboarders, organizations, brands and manufacturers for the further expansion of skateboarding; to assist in building quality skateparks; to provide financial assistance to top skateboarders to attend international skateboarding contests; to create a centralized judging and scoring system; and to provide a platform to create national, regional and local contests. World Skateboarding federation is a USA incorporated nonprofit 501-c-3 organization. For more information visit www.worldskateboardingfederation.org.